Weekly Readings Newsletter

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter Nine,” COMMON GROUND: Letters to a World Community of Meditators (New York: Continuum, 1999), pp. 103-104.

Meditation allows no self-deception. We see ourselves as we are. It is impossible to avoid seeing the ways in which we are phony or hypocritical; our illusions, self-deceptions, fearful insecurities, and compulsions stand out clearly

From John Main OSB, “Growing Point,” THE HEART OF CREATION, (New York (Continuum, 1998), pp. 105-107.

God is the breath of life. God is presence and he is present deep within our being, in our hearts. If only we persevere we discover that in the power of his Spirit each one of us is regenerated, renewed, recreated so that we become a new creation.

Every great spiritual tradition has known that in profound stillness the human spirit begins to be aware of its own Source. In the Hindu tradition, for example, the Upanishads speak of the spirit of the One who created the universe as dwelling in our hearts.

An excerpt from John Main OSB, “From Isolation to Love,” THE WAY OF UNKNOWING (New York: Crossroad, 1990), pp. 44-46.

We meditate because we know with absolute certainty that we must pass through and beyond our own sterility. We must transcend the sterility of the closed system, of a purely introspective mind. We know, with an ever greater clarity, that we have to pass beyond isolation into love.

. . . .Forgiveness [is] a process that takes us deep into our own wounded humanity, where we find our true self. Forgiveness can only be complete when it is as complete as the love of Jesus for his enemies; and that can only come about when we know ourselves as fully as he knew himself, and loved himself.

An excerpt from John Main OSB, “Integrity,” WORD MADE FLESH (London: DLT, 1993), pp. 55-56.

It often seems as if we rush through life at such high speed while in our heart there is the essential interior flame of being. Our rushing often brings it to the point of extinction. But when we sit down to meditate, in stillness and simplicity, the flame begins to burn brightly and steadily.

Meditation is the power of prayer that holds our attention at the still point of conversion, where we are shocked into reality by acceptance. By being rooted in this place of transformation which is not geographical but spiritual, our own inmost centre, we are changed from being an approximation, a mere imitation of ourselves, into the exact original of who we are.

From John Main, OSB, “Beyond All Images,” THE WAY OF UNKNOWING (New York: Crossroad, 1990), pp. 41-43.

Meditation is a way of coming to an immeasurable reality beyond all images. The problem we face on this journey is that we have to sidestep our own ego which is the supreme manufacturer of images, mostly images of ourselves and, to a lesser extent, images of others, even images of God.

From John Main OSB, "Growing in God," THE WAY OF UNKNOWING (New York: Crossroad, 1990), pp. 79-81.

The longer you meditate, the longer you persevere through the difficulties and the false starts, then the clearer it becomes to you that you have to continue if you are going to lead your life in a meaningful and profound way.

An excerpt from John Main OSB, “Self-Will and Divine-Will,” MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS: The Spiritual Letters of John Main (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2006) pp. 195-96.

St Paul tells us that there is a light shining in our hearts. St John tells us that this light is the point of divine consciousness, of infinitely pure love, to be fond and worshipped in every person—the light that enlightens everyone who comes into this world.